What Do You Deem Scummy?

[Flavor Leaf]

Yo. I'm looking into writing another guide of some sort, but I want to get some more perspectives of what makes different individuals' ScumDar go off.

Can be anything really that would make you want to vote someone, like a flip flop on a read, an early claim, or hammering at E-1 without allowing a claim. Really just wanting to see what others see as scummy, and take all of that into consideration for writing another guide. (Might be a while, but it's been on my mind, so thought I'd be a bit proactive).

What's Scummy vs What Scum Actually Do

is kind of a starting point for what I'm writing, but I expect and would like it to evolve into a bit more than that.

If you'd like to check out my other guide, here's Playing As Mafia.

[Flavor Leaf]

Something that pings me generally is when people make that fourth or fifth vote on a wagon after a stalled wagon. It always gives me pause because it's an active piece of action taken. It definitely can come from town, but I always get nervous when someone makes that step.

[NorwegianboyEE]

When Flavour Leaf makes a post in game of mafia.

[Firebringer]

Norwee making gif posts

[Flavor Leaf]

When Flavour Leaf makes a post in game of mafia.

it is a fair point to naturally scum read with the majority of players who have had success as scum for sure.

The combination of that + me giving away trades and secrets of my scum game have ensured my town game to forever suffer Town game because scum games I at least would have partners to help pushback.

[Irrelephant11]

- Narrative-ization: when I perceive that someone is inserting a narrative to someone else's words & actions that I don't think is there

- Voting for town: especially more than once

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

- AtE: especially to do anything other than defend oneself

[NorwegianboyEE]

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

I find the opposite scummy. If someone is being way too easy to change their mind based on what the majority thinks, i suspect they are scum trying to placate and appease the thread to stay alive.

[Irrelephant11]

Sure, that too. I suppose "the wrong amount of reasonableness"

[StrangeMatter]

Excessively defensive is usually scummy to me. Also if you know its a play they could go through with, (depends on logic) and matches with said that play, it likely is scum.

[SirCakez]

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

I find the opposite scummy. If someone is being way too easy to change their mind based on what the majority thinks, i suspect they are scum trying to placate and appease the thread to stay alive.

This - like if someone is suspiciously "always down" to wagon anyone every day it feels like opportunism and scum trying to wagon off townies

[Cheetory6]

Forced sounding posting, particularly when it doesn't come from someone who's disinterested in the game.

[RadiantCowbells]

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

I find the opposite scummy. If someone is being way too easy to change their mind based on what the majority thinks, i suspect they are scum trying to placate and appease the thread to stay alive.

This - like if someone is suspiciously "always down" to wagon anyone every day it feels like opportunism and scum trying to wagon off townies

I would as a general rule say that people who are afraid to get their hands dirty are more likely to be scum than those who are willing to be on lots of wagons. It's an overly reductive claim to make because context matters a lot but something I found was that quite often new-intermediate scum, if they know a wagon is gonna happen without them, choose to holster their votes or vanity wagon rather than get on board with it, and are in general a lot more careful about not seeming scummy by being willing to vote whoever whenever in contrast to most townies who aren't really conscientious of how they look.

[Ramcius]

"Scummy" is really bad buzzword that people use to justify their bias opinion on why NAI this should be viewed as scum indicative, you can even see in this thread - adding "context matter" to your reason to find something scummy essentially just shows that thing is just NAI to begin with. It comes from my personal experience, I realised how much of my scumreads were jsut bias and not actually scum indicative and some were similar to things mentioned in thsi thread.

Now second part - what scum actually do is much more interesting topic. But it requires in depth understanding of town/scum mentality, also ability to understand what person in question consider helpful to town, cause often people have different opinions on optimal way of playing and it gives false positives on someone's scumdar, in essence you have to figure if person in question do whatever you consider scum action with full understanding of their action and not because they are inexperienced, trolling or some other reason that isn't caused by having red rolecard

[RadiantCowbells]

The absolute best way to find scum is to look for things that scum empirically do more than town as opposed to trying to intellectually discover what would and wouldn't be a scum play.

[petapan]

when i replace into a game (which is typically where i get better reads), what i look for is who is actively trying to scumhunt versus who is mostly making commentary or following along with other people's reads but isn't doing much on their own. most scum tend to play passively.


On a more irrational level, when someone starts tying people together before one has flipped ("if X flips scum, Y is their partner"), i always mentally bug out. i've seen it come from town plenty so tat i don't think it's reliably scummy, but in my mind it always goes to scum trying to either set up a misflip or distance themselves from a partner

[Flavor Leaf]

When people deal in absolutes early in game i generally tend to put up a wall against, though it comes from town a lot.

[Nancy Drew 39]

Making fake looking detailed readslists that look lamisty. Focusing on supericial things in someone’s posrs and ignore the main point of that post.

Anyone who hard sr’s someone solely based on their reaction to being voted, which could also come from town but I could also see opportunistic scum also jumping on that.

Over reaction to voting a not obviously townie slot.

Ignoring questions.

Pushing a slot for not getting a joke.

Sr a player where activity is nai for them.

Hardpushing lukers or 0 posters early game.

RQS.

[Gamma Emerald]

- Narrative-ization: when I perceive that someone is inserting a narrative to someone else's words & actions that I don't think is there

I tend to do this a lot as town

RQS.

:/

[Gamma Emerald]

As for my own takes, I think what consistently turns up scum for me is

> shallow questioning/engagement
> votes/pushes that seem over justified
> fluctuating activity pattern of lulls with denser chunks of analysis between them

[Nancy Drew 39]

- Narrative-ization: when I perceive that someone is inserting a narrative to someone else's words & actions that I don't think is there

I tend to do this a lot as town

RQS.

:/

The vast majority of cases I’ve seen mafia do that with close to 80% more likelihood than town. \_0_/

Another thing that might possibly ping me is some uncharacteristic awkward big ass post about how a particular player has suddenly seen the light after a long rant about their personal life.

Yes, I caught scum on their first post for doing exactly that.

[Zachrulez]

- Narrative-ization: when I perceive that someone is inserting a narrative to someone else's words & actions that I don't think is there

- Voting for town: especially more than once

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

- AtE: especially to do anything other than defend oneself

Narrative-ization in the right circumstances can be a good scum tell.

Voting for town in itself isn't scummy. Heck I'm sure most everyone has had a really bad game as town at some point they'd love to forget.

Unreasonableness? I wish it was inherently scummy. I've seen a lot of it from town unfortuantely that I couldn't see myself backing a wagon on that basis outside of meta.

ATE I think is the great mislynch shouter. It's the buzz word that gets people on the wagon and keeps them there but the truth is that town resorts to this all too often as well. Yes you'll get this from scum too but I strongly believe that you will get a scum lynch in spite of making this point not because of it.

Outside of replying to those specific points and at the risk of getting overly simplistic when hunting scum I would just generally look for the players who seemed like they weren't really interested in actually scumhunting. Maybe their posting looked like they were trying to lynch someone but they didn't really seem to care if the person was actually scum. Maybe the player made comments about things they thought were town but then ignored them because it would derail the wagon they're pushing. Just things that would lead you to believe that a paticular player wasn't genuine in their motives in the game in ways that didn't have other town explanations. (and yes always think about how you'd play certain power roles but obviously don't mention things out loud that would lead to aiding scum in power hunting.)

[Dannflor]

I would as a general rule say that people who are afraid to get their hands dirty are more likely to be scum than those who are willing to be on lots of wagons. It's an overly reductive claim to make because context matters a lot but something I found was that quite often new-intermediate scum, if they know a wagon is gonna happen without them, choose to holster their votes or vanity wagon rather than get on board with it, and are in general a lot more careful about not seeming scummy by being willing to vote whoever whenever in contrast to most townies who aren't really conscientious of how they look.

this is true

[Nancy Drew 39]

I would as a general rule say that people who are afraid to get their hands dirty are more likely to be scum than those who are willing to be on lots of wagons. It's an overly reductive claim to make because context matters a lot but something I found was that quite often new-intermediate scum, if they know a wagon is gonna happen without them, choose to holster their votes or vanity wagon rather than get on board with it, and are in general a lot more careful about not seeming scummy by being willing to vote whoever whenever in contrast to most townies who aren't really conscientious of how they look.

this is true

Yes and despite this, game after game, this continues to be ignored.

[Irrelephant11]

- Narrative-ization: when I perceive that someone is inserting a narrative to someone else's words & actions that I don't think is there

- Voting for town: especially more than once

- Unreasonableness: Being less willing to hear me out than I would normally expect a person to be

- AtE: especially to do anything other than defend oneself

Narrative-ization in the right circumstances can be a good scum tell.

Voting for town in itself isn't scummy. Heck I'm sure most everyone has had a really bad game as town at some point they'd love to forget.

Unreasonableness? I wish it was inherently scummy. I've seen a lot of it from town unfortuantely that I couldn't see myself backing a wagon on that basis outside of meta.

ATE I think is the great mislynch shouter. It's the buzz word that gets people on the wagon and keeps them there but the truth is that town resorts to this all too often as well. Yes you'll get this from scum too but I strongly believe that you will get a scum lynch in spite of making this point not because of it.

Outside of replying to those specific points and at the risk of getting overly simplistic when hunting scum I would just generally look for the players who seemed like they weren't really interested in actually scumhunting. Maybe their posting looked like they were trying to lynch someone but they didn't really seem to care if the person was actually scum. Maybe the player made comments about things they thought were town but then ignored them because it would derail the wagon they're pushing. Just things that would lead you to believe that a paticular player wasn't genuine in their motives in the game in ways that didn't have other town explanations. (and yes always think about how you'd play certain power roles but obviously don't mention things out loud that would lead to aiding scum in power hunting.)

Voting for town is obviously not proof someone is scum, but voting for town sure is something scum do. Otherwise VCA wouldn't mean anything. I guess I should specify that I'm talking specifically about votes that actually participate in an end-of-day elimination.

I agree that unreasonableness isn't inherently scummy, e.g. when it comes from someone I'm playing with for the first time. But the rest of my sentence was intended to mean "if I know someone to be 8/10 reasonable usually, and they're being 3/10 reasonable with me, that's a scum tell" - because it means they probably have motive to not see things my way. Sometimes this leads to accidental PR hunting.

I don't think AtE from the person being wagoned is necessarily scummy (depends on context, possibly NAI). But I do think scum are more likely than town to use AtE in all other scenarios (e.g. to push someone else, to affect the gamestate, to try to discredit someone leading conversation, etc).

[Flea The Magician]

Double speaking.
Anything that looks artificially thought streamed.
Flat defending.
Lack of emotion or conviction.